


all your loving and leaving

by naeildo



Category: TWICE (Band)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:27:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22586353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naeildo/pseuds/naeildo
Summary: Is she Tzuyu’s first love? She’d had relationships before back in Taiwan, when everything was easier, fights were harsher and louder, when Tzuyu didn’t find herself reaching for a dictionary, everything in her chest tumbling out in half-sentences. When Sana’s face twisting into something contrite and hurt hadn’t made her want to stop fighting and go out for dumplings at the shop outside campus instead.
Relationships: Chou Tzuyu/Minatozaki Sana
Comments: 2
Kudos: 71





	all your loving and leaving

**Author's Note:**

> reposted for the haters...

For what it’s worth, Tzuyu did think that they were always going to get here. 

She’s always believed in the logic of things, even if it was still a little strange and awkward at first - two of the prettiest girls on campus who also happened to like girls, Sana approaching Tzuyu after a shared lecture, ready to welcome her into the foreign students’ society. Then Sana started picking her apart, delicately and precisely but earnest, sincere all the same, and Tzuyu hadn’t known what to do with that. The weight of her affection that was hard to believe at first became the pinpoint of Tzuyu’s compass as she learned how to navigate this new world, Sana’s enthusiasm the anchor for her helpless feet. The inevitable catching up to them.

Now, Sana’s fingers wind loosely around Tzuyu’s, the winter air wrapping around them. Tzuyu’s strides are naturally a little wider, so she’s slowed down today, looking ahead at the withered trees as they walk, the sun wheeling out of the sky, dusk casting a soft glow on them both. 

The hold is tentative, a little afraid, somehow, and so very unlike the Sana that Tzuyu’s come to know that Tzuyu can’t help the way she looks up to search Sana’s face. Sana isn’t wearing her lenses today, bulky spectacles that Sana only started wearing around her recently resting on the tall bump of her nose. 

They’re on the precipice of something, Tzuyu knows, her own cheeks turning pink not from the wind but from the feeling of something blooming in her chest, bold and frightening by the sheer feeling of it.

“I like you,” Sana says, hesitantly. Fingers tightening around Tzuyu’s. Holding hands isn’t enough to arouse suspicion here, and neither are kisses on the cheek, especially when Sana and Tzuyu look so - normal. Down to her appropriately feminine shoes, and Sana’s bright, alluring smiles to everyone, from the counter staff at their local cafe to the man watching them from the park bench. So, Tzuyu tightens her hold around Sana’s hand and leans in close quickly, placing a soft kiss to Sana’s cheek that sets her face alight.

“You’re red,” Tzuyu points out, bluntly, and then regrets it immediately. “Your face.” How do you say  _ blushing _ ? Tzuyu wishes that her voice could sound a little rounder, a little less robotic. Wishes Sana could see what was inside her chest - her heart, beating loudly behind her ribs. Every old song that Tzuyu’s listened to and loved, catalogued for something down the line that she wasn’t sure of yet. Here, in this moment, Sana’s breath making patterns in the air, the spring of their feet on the pavement, Sana pulling her closer so their shoulders press together.

“That was the first time,” Sana says.

“Hmm?” Tzuyu is already squinting up at the sky in - embarrassment, maybe. Some sort of giddy, girlish wonder that she never had the chance to have in her youth.

Sana twists the wrist of her left hand in her right.

“The first time you -” Sana is saying, when Tzuyu lets impulse win over and kisses Sana’s cheek again, sloppier this time, her front teeth bumping against Sana’s cheekbones. Sana’s surprise turning into something like wonder.

/

“Am I?” Sana asks, snuggling into Tzuyu’s side. 

“Hmm?”

_ You were always - you were always - since I met you, you were - _

Tzuyu had been watching the drama with rapt attention, because it was wonderful, but also because the subtitles were still a little hard to follow if she wasn’t paying attention. Sana makes a noise of dissatisfaction around her shoulder, winding her arms around Tzuyu’s waist, and Tzuyu can’t help the smile that comes onto her face. Knows that Sana is looking at it too, and holding back from teasing her. Or just - staring, like she did sometimes, like she was cataloguing it for later.

“Your first love,” Sana says, quietly, voice unsure, and Tzuyu turns to look at her. Sana is smiling, still, a little dopey under the light of the TV, but Tzuyu knows that if she opened her eyes she’d see it in them - the strange insecurity that she still carried around, as if everyone in the world weren’t half in love with her.

Is she Tzuyu’s first love? She’d had relationships before back in Taiwan, when everything was easier, fights were harsher and louder, when Tzuyu didn’t find herself reaching for a dictionary, everything in her chest tumbling out in half-sentences. When Sana’s face twisting into something contrite and hurt hadn’t made her want to stop fighting and go out for dumplings at the shop outside campus instead.

The first time - the very first time, Sana had kissed her in the comfort of the older girl’s apartment before Nayeon had crashed in, then promptly started yelling out her apologies with her hands in front of her face. Sana had crumpled into Tzuyu, face red, nose pressed into the heavy space of her neck. And perhaps it said it all that Tzuyu had wanted to keep going, despite the embarrassment, curled her hand heavier against Sana’s hip. Despite Sana saying that they didn’t have to if she didn’t want to - if she wasn’t comfortable, and Tzuyu thought, careful thumbs sweeping across Sana’s cheeks, a giggle on the roof of her mouth, that -

“No,” she says, looking back at the TV screen. The male lead is leaning in, now, and Sana’s fingers are playing with her own impatiently. 

“That’s all?” 

The older girl is scooting back on the couch now, extending her legs so they fall into Tzuyu’s lap, the fabric of her pajamas chafing against Tzuyu’s bare thighs, hands folded in front of her chest. Frowning in the way that means she wants Tzuyu to kiss it away.

Tzuyu could pretend to ignore it, or she could give in, and fatigue of the day gives her little choice but to surrender.

Tzuyu leans forward, folding across Sana’s legs and trapping them there, making her laugh and kick at Tzuyu to get out. She crawls up with her hands to where Sana is, until their faces are level, until Tzuyu can see every freckle, every stray baby hair, every bat of Sana’s eyelashes. The way she’s staring at Tzuyu, a small smile on her pink face.

“What do you want me to say?” Tzuyu asks, pressing a kiss to the space behind the shell of Sana’s ear, relishes in the way Sana shivers. It still feels like a dream, sometimes. “That -” To the dip of her cheek, “I,” the curve of her jaw, “think of you,” the corner of her lips, and Sana has her arms wrapped around Tzuyu’s back now, “when I wake -”

Sana tastes like the pocari sweat she’d gotten from the convenience store at a whim, completely inappropriate for a movie date, but it doesn’t matter now, really. Not when she’s laughing into Tzuyu’s neck, whatever petulance forgotten.

“And when I go to sleep?”

Tzuyu presses a kiss to Sana’s eyelids, gentle and light, and Sana leans forward, forehead plastered to her shoulder. 

Sana giggles. Tzuyu can feel it all shoot straight through her arms and into her chest, the feeling of it thrumming through her veins. “Something like that,” Sana says, finally, pulling Tzuyu closer.

/

It’s so simple, in the end. A mathematical equation of sorts that has weaved the ennui that’s settled like dust between the two of them. Sana’s unhappiness cannot overcome it, and neither can Tzuyu’s stubbornness. Or maybe it’s the other way around, Tzuyu thinks, watching the way Sana’s brows furrow, like she’s trying to figure a way out of this.

This: there is nothing to this, Tzuyu’s favourite song blasting from a convenience store a stone’s throw away, Sana’s fingers threading through her hair, again and again. Her ankles, heavy as they lift off and return back to the pavement.

Sana had just been lounging on her bed. There had been too little tension the previous days, mostly because they could never really meet for too long, Sana absorbed in her dance practices and Tzuyu in photoshoot after photoshoot, and Sana had said: “do you think we should break up?”

Clapped her hand over her mouth, after, while Tzuyu swiveled around slowly to face her.

“What?”

Sana’s gaze flickered to the carpet of Tzuyu’s room.

“I just say stupid things sometimes. Ignore me.” Tzuyu had bristled with the weight of everything that she’d learned - Sana tended to say things that didn’t make sense, but she was always telling the truth, in some way or another. So she said:

“Do you want to?”

Sana was chewing on her bottom lip, the book she was reading bookmarked by a bump in Tzuyu’s covers. “What?” She said, but her voice was small.

“Do you think we should?” Tzuyu pressed, again, because Sana had felt like she was slipping away the past few months, and Tzuyu had started wondering if she wasn’t the one to make her stay. Tzuyu was present, but not exciting. Pretty, but not beautiful. Mature, but still a little too young.

_ I think we should. _

They’re in a park, the same one. But Sana’s shoulder pressed to hers feels cold rather than warm, and she’s looking endlessly at the ground, placing her wallet in her left hand, and then switching to the right. It isn’t a fizzling out, Tzuyu doesn’t think - only that when she looks into the future, everything else seems a bit clearer. Then there’s Sana, leaping in and out of the edges, looking like a dream that Tzuyu wants to have but doesn’t know how to.

“Okay,” Sana says, finally, and the tone of her voice tells Tzuyu all she really needs to know. Sana, leaning down to press a kiss to the corner of Tzuyu’s mouth, off-center enough that it’s almost chaste. She’s still holding Tzuyu’s hand.

/

“You know, they say that people start to look different when you fall out of love with them.”

For many reasons, it’s fitting that they meet again here. Tzuyu is scrubbing at the coat of a particularly uncooperative chihuahua, crippled in one leg, when someone squats down beside her in bright Adidas shoes. Tzuyu follows the path of her ankles up to her face, and Sana is smiling back at her, bright-eyed and open, like she was the first time they met.

“You look the same to me,” Tzuyu says, without thinking, and watches Sana’s lips curl up. As first loves do, perhaps Sana will look the same to Tzuyu forever, the way the sun looks to her in the sky, bright and blinding, bringing light where it rises.

“Does that mean you’re still in love with me, or that you never were?” Sana’s cocking her head thoughtfully, the way Tzuyu has learned means that she’s joking. There’s still something awfully tender about it that makes Tzuyu put a hand out in front of her to steady herself, fingers pressing a small crop circle into the litter on the floor. Tzuyu doesn’t believe she’d know how to answer, anyway - neither, Tzuyu thinks. Both. I loved you and I love you and I always will. I stopped dreaming of a future with you the night we both agreed to walk away. 

“Do I look different to you?” Tzuyu asks, instead, and the smile that Sana returns is brilliant. 

Sana cradles a small bulldog in her arms, shoveling away the debris that’s gathered underneath him before placing him gently back on the floor.

“Yes,” Sana says, honestly. Tzuyu can see Jeongyeon eyeing them from across the shelter - Tzuyu was so  _ normal _ , after everything. One moment Sana was there, colonizing every part of their apartment, and the next moment she was gone. Jeongyeon had asked her, once, delicately, over breakfast, and then five times more after, in the middle of a shitty movie on their TV, when Jeongyeon was painting her nails for practice, whether she had ever really loved Sana. Tzuyu never knew what to say, in those moments. Sana was still there, in her memories and in her dreams. In the quiet touches of her fingers when she was drifting off to sleep and gave herself away to her impulses. But she was gone, for all practical purposes. And if Tzuyu ached at all, Jeongyeon wouldn’t have to be vexed by it.

“How are your -” Sana starts, but Tzuyu interrupts abruptly.

“I was happy.” 

Sana doesn’t smile as much as let out a bright noise of surprise, but that’s better, on the scale of things that Tzuyu likes about Sana. She likes the impolite things, the laughter that comes out when it doesn’t have to. When she held Tzuyu’s hand all the way home just because she could and wanted to, kissing her outside her door like all of it was their big, unfathomable secret. Sana’s eyes flicker to her nose, her lips, down to her neck. They must look so silly, Tzuyu can’t help thinking. Wrapped up in plastic, her hair up in a messy bun, Sana’s own barely hanging on inside her scrunchie. Tzuyu’s chihuahua trying to make her escape for the third time while she lurches forward to cage her in. Tzuyu’s arm is crooked against the floor when she says: “I was always happy with you.”

Sana never asked for forgiveness because there was nothing to forgive, but Tzuyu has always sensed it, that regret and lingered between the two of them. The apologies Sana swallowed back when they saw each other in the halls. This isn’t a moment of catharsis, and neither of them need it, at this point. Tzuyu’s seen a few people in the past year, short-lived things that never worked out for one reason or another. Whether Sana’s done the same doesn’t matter. Sana was there for her in her difficult years, and then she was gone, and Tzuyu had only ever known how to take the next sensible step.

“I was too,” Sana says, finally. 

Then Sana laughs. It’s one that Tzuyu found disconcerting at first until she realized it was real - that Sana just laughed like this, loved like this, and that for a little while, she’d chosen Tzuyu to bear the light that she scattered around herself, trying to catch it all with her small, unsure hands.

Her hand finds Tzuyu’s, their rubber gloves chafing together like a record scratch, and Sana giggles at that. The sound is still delightful, Tzuyu thinks, watching the way Sana’s face blooms into a wide-eyed smile, the way she turns to look at Tzuyu, all the longing that’d sunk into them coming up for air before tumbling back down again. 

“Can I tell you something?” Tzuyu says, and can’t help the smile in her own voice. 

Sana hums.

They’re shoulder to shoulder in this little dog pen, the smell of dried litter in the air. It’s spring, the light of the sun glancing off the windows in this little shelter and making shadows dance on Sana’s face. She’s still beautiful, with her undrawn eyebrows, the dip of the scar that cuts across the very edge of her top lip. The one Tzuyu used to kiss. 

Loving and leaving her didn’t really feel like - Tzuyu doesn’t feel like she’s lost anything, if she really thinks about it. Only gained a bigger heart, and clearer eyes to see the world with. There is no need for forgiveness, only the heavy weight of things left unsaid, for better or for worse. Even now her eyes are warm. Even now she is gentle, with the brightness of her love covering everything, every awkward thought that Tzuyu should be having, every fear that Tzuyu should fear surfacing. So Tzuyu can say it. 

“You were my first love.”


End file.
